I'm seeing dozens of mustangs with 500lbs and rockets in the Korean war, No 1,000lbs either - I wonder why.
Weight has always been a limiting factor in aircraft.You can usually carry a lot of weight(in the 51D), or you could carry a lot of fuel, but you can't carry both a lot of weight and a lot of fuel. Max allowable take-off weight being 12,100 lbs, in the D or K model ponie, with empty weight of 7,635(roughly), you only have 4,365lb's avaiable payload weight to play with. That is assuming you have a paved, asphalt or concrete runway, of at least 6,000 feet and it is not to much above sea level. With fuel for the ponie weighting 6.5 lbs per gallon and an average flight time of 4 hrs per mission,(estimate), at 60 gallon per hour flight planning time, that is 390X 4 hrs flight= 1560 lbs. The big problem in Korea were runway lengths and condition of runway material, runway gradiant and etc, which usually limited total takeoff weights around 10,000 lbs. So that leaves us with a takeoff weight of 9,195 pounds, which leaves only 805 pounds for ords. Don't forget pilot weight of 180lbs average, and 350 lbs for bomb and rocket racks, leaves us 275 lbs for ords. 6 "holy Moses" rockets weighted 45 pounds each,(270 lbs), hence you have a total weight of 5 pounds left for bombs. Now if you take off at maximum allowable takeoff weight of 12,100lbs, then you could, in theory, add 2 1,000lber's, but you better have a looooong runway in front of you when takeing off. Now if you only load 2 500lber's, that is only11,100lbs at takeoff, but do able with proper runway lenght and pilot skill. South Korean Air Force lost a good many pilots due to takeoff accidents because of heavy loaded ponies. Understand now why usually only rockets or bombs loaded out, but usually not both?
